Tag archives: MIT

Crowdsourcing 101

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Sunday, 1 March 2009

Guest Post. Geng Tan, joined Mutopo forJanuary 2009, as part of MIT’s externship program. Geng Tan is a junior at MIT majoring in Mechanical Engineering and Management Science. Although he is a mechanical engineer by training, he is also interested in marketing and business development, especially through web 2.0 tools. In the past, he has interned at Hakuhodo Inc. one of Japans leading marketing consultancies and is currently leading up a crowdsourcing project at MIT related to education and technology.

Crowdsourcing

From the start, people have used the Internet to collaborate – the first research communities would use tools like e-mail to share information more quickly. In recent years, as global online participation has surged and connectivity costs have dropped, new forms of group collaboration have emerged as organizations try to harness the power of many connected people.

Earlier forms of these include the Linux “free-software” movement, but in the recent years more and more value, in the forms of Wikipedia articles, Youtube videos, Yelp reviews, Istockphotos’ pictures, SETI’s massive calculation power, just to name a few, are generated over the web through contribution of the “crowd,” the increasingly active internet users.

In this post, I would like to propose a framework for “crowdsourcing,” a term describing, according to wikipedia, “the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call.” According to Jeff Howe, the author of Crowdsourcing, the foundation of crowdsource is the concept of spare cycles, the spare time people naturally spend on hobbies and leisure, such as playing baseball with kids, taking pictures, web-surfing and blog posting. Crowdsourcing is achieved by harnessing people’s spare cycles to generate value.

Some Examples

Businesses are paying more attention to this phenomenon because it has been shown time and again that these projects can produce products of superior quality (such as Mathwork’s competitions, Wikipedia, myStarbucksidea, Muji.net) and generate contributions such as content , computing resources or donations of massive scale (such as Yelp’s review systems,  Istockphotos, Dell ideastorm, Kiva, Skype’s model of data processing) even compared to the most successful corporations. It also provides a few other advantages, such as reducing expenses associated with marketing, distribution as well as customer support.

I’ll first introduce how crowd source is used to generate quality and/or quantity of work, build a framework for businesses that attempt to crowdsource, and then list a few examples of successful crowdsourcing projects. I’ll conclude by listing the dos and the don’ts in crowdsourcing.

In any crowd sourcing project, users gather around an issue/task/topic and each work on a small portion of the project. Even though each person is working on a very small portion, the web allows for a massive accumulation of work. The crowd often forms a self-perpetuating community as well, and they can generate a lot of ideas, build upon each other’s ideas, and self improve the inferior ideas to form a better one. This almost resembles web games, such as the World of Warcraft, where users competitively build superior characters. As a result, there exist a myriad of characters and competitiveness nature of the system forces the superior characters to surface.

One key point to be noted here is that if the purpose of the project depended on diversity of ideas, such as in the case of brainstorming or producing reviews, the project manager needs to limit the interactions among the users. Too much interaction tends to form a trend within the community and such crowd-mentality trend to weed out the less main-stream ideas (imagine a forum where people nominated presidential candidates. Everyone chat about candidates and people agree on obama as a good candidate. Nominations of other candidate from this group seems very unlikely). However, if the project really wanted to produce a single quality idea, the manager want to encourage as much interaction among the crowd to encourage the crowd to build upon each other’s ideas (encouraging everyone on a forum to debate about who’s a superior candidate in the election.).

A proposed framework for making crowdsourcing work for your organization

1.Identify a crowd, a goal, and a method of contribution

The crowd can be preexisting or created. Pre-existing community can be internally marketed, and the existing rules can be imported.

If a new community is to be created it needs to be organized and encouraged. The new rules need to be created, and culture need to be formed. Relationship management is the key

The goal or goals needs to be clear and practical

Method of contribution needs to be simple and easy to use. Good user interface is the key, because it makes it easy for people to contribute their free time and wont get in the way of the primary experience, such as contributing and communicating.

2. Motivate contribution, motivate peer review/revision, collaboration, and consolidate the community

Motivate contribution by giving people the recognition for their work. People want to be heard, be appreciated, be recognized. This can be done by creating special “power user” status, giving front page coverage, etc. linked to specific measures of success.

Motivate peer review by encouraging discussion among users. “everyone’s equal on the web.”

Show that contributions make a difference and are appreciated – by other participants and/or by the organization.

Consolidate community by encouraging personal interactions. Easier for localized websites, such as yelp and facebook. Sponsored/hosted events may be helpful. i.e. yelp (yelp’s night’s out) and istockphoto (istockalypses).

You can check community health by looking at metrics such as number of posts, repeat traffic versus new, what percentage of people are contributing versus browsing, etc.

Also remember that people participate in different ways. For example perhaps only 1% of users will actively generate content while the majority might simply observe.

3. Market to a larger crowd and repeat 2.

Market via word of mouth. i.e. other people’s blog posts, forum posts, reviews, etc.

Market via scandalous/controversial/disruptive content. Lots of coverage from existing media, lots of people talk about it, lots of buzz.

Rely on sudden burst of publicity – people discovering an active community are more likely to try it out. If there are no signs of life already, no amount of promotion will help to seed.

4. Measure how you are benefiting

Does the community feel exploited? Its important to constantly monitor whether or not the organization is doing its part for the community in return for their contributions. If value is not fairly exchanged, you are likely to fail.

Use generated ideas for commercial purposes.

Revenues from advertising associated with generated content.

Get donation like Wikipedia  personal messages, appealing to people’s interest, who other people that you are getting donated.

Ask your community how you should benefit and how they would like to benefit, too!

Some examples of these ideas in action

Manga Helpers

http://mangahelpers.com/

1. Identify a crowd, a goal, and a method of contribution

i.e. manga lovers, translation of Japanese manga, a manga data base

2. motivate contribution, motivate peer review/revision, collaboration, and consolidate the community

i.e. personal messages, grant special status, public acknowledgement, individuals can contribute different translations, and formation of clan/ranking of clans, paid trips to anime convention, etc.

3. Market to more crowd and repeat 2.

i.e. blog reviews, word of mouth, media coverage

4. Financial return

Gain enough data for commercial use, sell the data

Gain enough traffic, earn revenue from advertisement

Be disruptive enough to the existing big companies to be bought out

Get donation like Wikipedia style

Mathworks Competition

http://www.mathworks.com/contest/furniture/about.html

1. Identify a crowd, a goal, and a method of contribution

i.e. Coders, Superior Algorithm, Competition Style,

2. motivate contribution, motivate peer review/revision, and loosely consolidate the community

i.e. publicity via niche distributors, such as university prof, professional publications, blogs, etc. Open up the winning code, and frequently comment/update the competition website, generate hype among competitors and their friends via granting them publicity

3. Market to more crowd and repeat 2.

i.e. blog reviews, word of mouth, media coverage

4. Financial return on the capital

Gain good enough data for commercial use, sell the data

Build brand with students

Identify potential talent

Wikipedia

http://www.wikipedia.org/

1. Identify a crowd, a goal, and a method of contribution

i.e. Specialists, Encyclopedia, Write articles,

2. motivate contribution, motivate peer review/revision, and loosely consolidate the community

i.e. ask professionals to write few articles, give people tools for revision, encourage discussion between professionals

3. Market to more crowd and repeat 2.

i.e. blog reviews, word of mouth, media coverage

4. Financial return on the capital

Currently just accepting donations, although there is constant suggestions to monetize using advertising.

Failed Examples

CurrentTV – TV programs created from feedback by users for the users  failed because it overestimated crowd’s capacity to generate large professional grade content. Hence few contributions and little to talk about.

Assignment Zero – crowd source journalism and publish the content created by the crowd. Failed to build a seed community

So what can we learn from these?

Dos

Encourage community building among users

Think of ways to serve and help the users. In turn, they will help you

Separate the tasks into small distinct bits

Have a clear objective for the users to perform

Guide the crowd along the way

Listen to the crowd

Donts

Take the crowd for granted, they are your equal

Go against the will of the crowd, they have power

Leave the crowd alone, they need your guidance

Ask crowd to do too much at once, they don’t have time

Complicate the process, they don’t have patience

Exploit the crowd, they are not stupid.

In conclusion, crowdsourcing has promising potential for content creation (quality and quantity) and marketing. It has also been shown that ventures based on crowdsourcing, the whim of the crowd, can be self-sustaining and profitable. It also saves money and time for the existing companies. Effectively used, crowdsourcing can generate more ideas and form a strong brand loyalty for the company.

[UPDATE- we have expanded this idea to create www.colaboratorie.org]

Posted in: Crowdsourcing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

MUJI – Just Enough Design by Everyone

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Thursday, 23 October 2008

MUJI began life humbly, as a store brand sold in Japan’s Seiyu LTD stores in the early 80s. In 1989 it was spun off as its own company. The idea, still embraced today was simply to make what is necessary, nothing less and nothing more.  

MUJI was conceived to be different from the start. The complete name MUJIrushi Ryohin means “No Label. Good Products”, which is at the core of what the business is about.  MUJI was conceived to be different from the start. It was one of the first brands to spell out a Japanese word in English (English characters are not uncommon in Japan, but usually they are used to spell English words).

Beyond the name, the process of creating products was different. MUJI product developers would survey 1000s of customers to understand what they needed. And then they would try to meet these needs in the simplest, cheapest ways possible. The slogan for “R&D” was to “make what you want, as a customer”. 

The approach proved very successful. During Japan’s recession, MUJI flourished while other floundered. But between  1999 and 2001, the company suffered through a spectacular financial crisis. The company had expanded quickly into new lines and abandoned much of the focus on customers. Towards the end of the decline and just before their remarkable comeback, the product development team was ordered to oversee the dumping  of their unsold  product inventory as a sign that they would be starting again to refocus on what customers wanted. 

Today, the focus on the product development is evident in a number of ways, from Investor messages to the unbranded products which are increasingly recognizable by their simple forms and deliberately absent logos. Beyond the products themselves is a focus on the experience of buying these products. 

MUJI is not just a creator of products, they also take great pains to provide the right environment to show and sell their products. Many people who visit the stores, have commented on the sense of calm they feel when entering and walking around the stores. Try visiting MUJI online – its an experience unlike any online retailer, conveying the same peaceful this-is-enough-not-too-much philosophy of its products and stores. 

Perhaps most interesting, is what evokes the fanatical following they have developed, which caused much chatter and celebration in NYC when they finally launched their store here. Although not everyone believes MUJI’s approach will work in the US against the likes of Target and Walmart. We’ll see – MUJI’s prices are higher since they dont have much footprint in the US yet. Companies like Zara have had similar market entry economics issues. 

Perhaps most interesting is that MUJI shares openly their design philosophy at their core of their success. And they encourage others to help them create according to these rules. They actively seek out ideas from anyone who touches their business and then work hard, with employees and partners alike to design products to instantiate these ideas. 

The Best Ideas from Everyone

MUJI has a systematic way to constantly harvest the best ideas and present them, ultimately to the design team, for he creation of new products. The process makes use of all touch points. In stores, employees are encouraged to make and collect notes. MUJI.net has almost 500,000 members and is used as another source of ideas. And then anthropological opportunities are presented when people go to MUJI camps where people can be observed using products so that additional insights might be gained. 

Enough Design

At the core of the MUJI culture, is simple design – or more specifically, just what is necessary, simultaneously creating beautiful, simpler to manufacture and therefore cheaper, products. The cutting board example, explains nicely how MUJI approaches design to reduce products to their essential functions. 

Can you spot the difference? Its still a cutting board, just more so, or less so, depending on your perspective, but for sure it is likely cheaper, or for the same price, it can use better materials. 

I see some parallels with some of Apple’s recent work, as they talk about their latest Macbook in terms of simplifying, reducing the unnecessary and the focus on materials. Unlike Apple, MUJI will not allow disclosure of their designers, in keeping with the strong no-branding policy. But there is much speculation that many of its items are designed by some of the best desigers in the world. 

Finally, to get even more ideas, the Muji Award has been running for 3 years (although MUI ran prior competitions, I believe). The entries are solicited globally and has resulted in a number of products that have found their way into stores. 

If We Build It, Will You Come?

MUJI takes advantage of many opportunities to figure out what people want. But it goes a step further. Even when MUJI has a design, it takes the final step of checking who will by it, before it is produced. Easy way to avoid a complete flop.

In 2006, business week covered how MUJI.net, is used to solicity and select new product and design ideas.  And then:

MUJI then tests the market by soliciting customer pre-orders rather than conducting a focus group or survey, or using other traditional market research methodology. Simply put, if 300 customers pre-order an item online, it goes into production.

As the MIT Sloan researchers point out. MUJI in effect collaborates with customers to plan their products. By getting commitments upfront to buy, MUJI gets a definitive commitment beyond anything they might get through surveys and estimation. One might suspect that these initial commitments might correlate with lifetime value much like opening box office weekends can be good predictors of the lifetime value of movies. 

So enough with the boring analysis, lets just see what all the fuss is about. Buinessweek has a good slide show featuring some of the better known products. 

Special thanks to Makoto Arai (fellow Berlin School participant) for his help in researching, analyzing and translating coverage of MUJI in Japan. 

Posted in: Product Development | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment

Online Analytics for the Physical World

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Sunday, 29 June 2008

Knowing what people say and knowing what they do, can be a powerful combination. Online marketing has capitalized on this via rich analytics to look at what people are saying or searching for and ultimately what they are buying. Web analytics is letting online marketers sort through the differences between what people say they do and what they actually do.

This is the core of online marketing’s advantage over traditional media. But what is happening where most of us still live? i.e the physical world.

Well, we have various profiling tools, such as affinity cards. So we can figure out how people are spending. But how did we land up in the store that day? A coupon code perhaps? We cant really be sure. We know things like 12m people are supposed to have visited this location.  But then we don’t really know where they went or where they came from (we think perhaps 25% are international based on surveys, for example).

But this is starting to change. Mutopo is working with one client to track in store movement, using signals from cell phones. The approach lets us show a location owner how people move around the space, not unlike what I might see from online analytics – navigation paths, entrance and exit points, time spent at certain locations etc. And so now, I can make changes in reality and measure the responses, not just changes in sales.

While we are working on a very local scale, we were excited to learn about Prof Tony Jebara’s new project, Sense Networks. Tony and his team are harvesting a variety of data sets to understand what people are doing – they are, in effect bringing online analytics into the real world.

Things like the most searched items on Google Trends might have realwold analogs such as the most visited restaurants. Or conversion reports might now be possible from outdoor campaigns, as you can get a real sense of the number of people who might have walked past a specific location.

The image on the left shows an example application to show the “hotspots” in San Francisco. These are literally the places you want to be if you are asking the question: where is everyone going tonight? Yes, its realtime. You can learn more about this app at Citysense.

It might be possible to know for sure how many more people in New York City have chosen to bike to work. I can start to see if more people are going to the new Ikea in Brooklyn instead of alternatives in New York City, such as Bed Bath and Beyond or the Container Store. Where I might have used Google Analytics to benchmark my site, now I can do the same for my store.

And we can now play what-if, in the real world. What if we:

  • change the layout of the store?
  • place new promotional signage at the hallway?
  • invest in signage alongside the highway?
  • purchase the locaton on 26th and 5th?
  • notice that more people are starting to cycle in NYC?
  • see more people dining out in a new area of town?
  • see more people going to Trader Joe’s than Wholefoods?

Its feels like we are on the verge of a significant change in how data from cell phones, GPS devices and the like can be analyzed in new and interesting ways. Good luck to Tony and the team at Sense Networks. We cant wait to see what people are going to do with your analysis.

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Top 40 Products and Services

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Thursday, 19 June 2008

I remember growing up with the top 40 count down in South Africa. Each weekend, “the worlds best music” would be counted down from 40 to 1.

I was happy to re-encounter the idea in “The Word of Mouth Manual: Vol.II“. And so I thought is would be interesting to see what products and services are on my Top 40.

The order isnt important, because the process is a little lumpy. I seem to get stuck on themes and then recall related stuff. I am sure some cognitive, neural science folks know why this is. So the point is, I removed the numbers.

I left out media – news, books, music, games, etc. Just made the list cleaner. Of course, the book that inspired the post, is implicitly on the list. Clever. I filtered out clients and investments…we can discuss another time, why.

Right.

So here goes:

  • Apple TV – I dont have cable anymore (Berlin Schooler’s reading this will roll their eyes. ok). Everyone at home can use it, including Max. I discovered video podcasts on the big screen from people like TED and NYTimes and Monocle (ok, no more media).
  • Time Warner – happily not paying for cable anymore. But thanks for pretty reliable internet.
  • WordPress - I talked about why I moved TO WordPress.
  • Typepad - …and away from Typepad.
  • Lego - I have liked these little blocks since I recall liking stuff (and now other little plastic pieces and computers and electronics).
  • iPhone - for mixed reasons. I was excited and as things begin to fail (like parts of the screen are unresponsive to touch), I am giving Blackberry or Samsung a look again.
  • Dell - still one of the best PCs and just never been convinced that Macs are any better, particularly since now I seem to do most work in a browser with the exception of Excel.
  • Bruder - not sure who likes these toy trucks more – me or Max.
  • Twitter - I dont know why. I guess I like what I call the “Cosmo Kramer Effect” – i.e. someone just flinging open the door and saying something dumb, funny, timely etc.
  • Basecamp - its just useful and simple and better than anything else I have used, until Google comes up with an alternative or buys it or rips it off.
  • Nikon D40 – shutter speed
  • Wii - all sorts of things, but mainly inclusive, so I dont have to feel anti-social. Even non-gamers can have a go.
  • ZipCar - the joys of non-ownership and having a Mini or a Element or a convertible or you-get-the-idea.
  • Woodstock, NY – cant put my finger on it, but always enjoy going
  • Google - Apps, Reader, Search, Trends, Maps, its just open all day long being used in new and interesting ways.
  • Karyodong Bakery – the home of perfect bread
  • Coffee Shop – breakfast central on Union Square
  • Wikipedia - feels like part of Google, but I recognize it is its own thing
  • Lotus Exige – I cant say this as well as Top Gear and this is the only car missing from the ZipCar line-up I might be willing to buy.
  • Burton - have my board and an assortment of jackets and love the idea of a banker being let go and coming back to start an awesome company. I guess Bloomberg has a similar story.
  • Nike Plus - I dont use it, because I dont run. But I still want it.
  • Denuo - they are doing interesting work at the intersection of advertising, new media, etc. And as I meet more people there, I like them even more.
  • Sequoia Capital – they may not want to work with me, yet , but I still think that are the best of the best.
  • Microsoft - still hopeful, but slowly shedding their wares. Down to Excel as my only must have.
  • Berlin School of Creative Leadership – a brave new forray into executive education and I am really enjoying being back at school.
  • Alternative Energy – can I include Nuclear (I dont think its evil)? These just make more sense that current energy options, even if I rely on others to do the math.
  • Jeff Jarvis – Jeff deserves special mention because I keep mentioning him and his ideas.
  • Bazaarvoice - a little obsessed with reviews, as I have mentioned and so keep wanting to include these folks in my projects.
  • Springwise - constant list of good, new stuff. Special mention to PSFK, too, but sometimes overwhelmed by their twittering.
  • MIT - still the home of some of the smartest people I know, who also happen to give a damn about humanity.
  • Obama - hopeful in all ways.
  • Brazil - the country of the future and hopefully we are nearing the future soon. We’ll have to live there for a bit at some point.
  • Amazon - Prime and Proud.
  • Ikea - I almost forgot! Whether its hacking from pieces of furniture or just using it as it was designed.
  • New York City – still the center of the world.
  • Seamlessweb - do people actually call to order food, still?
  • Fresh Direct – cant live without. Almost literally.
  • Newegg - still my first stop to find out what is best in all of electronics land. Blogs, etc are second to the user reviews. Thanks everyone.
  • Havaianas – would wear them all the time if Andrea let me.

I am sort of amazed, ashamed, proud and confused but the brands that are top of mind for me at the moment. Its not scientific, but interesting nonetheless.

What’s on your list?

Update: I need to add Skype somewhere and BitTorrent. See – the themes again. Also, Method should be here, but for some reason, i always feel wierd about talking about clearning products. If this was Andrea’s list, it would have made the cut.

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